Whilst it wasn't too surprising, it was pleasing to see the attempts to block the adoption of new sustainability reporting standards being rejected by more than half of the European parliament on 18 October, which means that more than 50,000 companies will need to report on their climate impact.
This reaffirms the EU's position as one of the leaders in reporting on the impact of climate change and sustainability issues, as well as the wider impact that businesses in the EU have on the environment.
It will be interesting to see if the UK government will follow and adopt a similar approach to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) and sustainability reporting in the coming years. This is especially topical after withdrawing draft regulations (released in July) to strengthen non-financial reporting rules after businesses raised concerns about imposing additional non-financial reporting requirements including the costs to implement.
How this area develops in the near future will certainly be intriguing.
Initially more than 11,000 listed companies that will have to comply from the start of 2024 but the scope will expand to large non-listed companies and listed small and medium enterprises in 2025 and 2026, totalling around 50,000 entities.
https://www.ft.com/content/a3216188-8e50-4a62-a8d9-e89172b3ddc7
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